Wagon Race Girls

This is a little painting I did after attending a wagon race in Oklahoma.  We just happened upon it on a Sunday drive. 

To Bid and visit my Ebay Gallery

Gathering Herbs

To Bid

This painting started out by using a master work as a jumping off point.  Originally this girl was in a cathedral or castle and holding something totally different.  Since I like being outside and in the woods, and I like foraging, I thought I would put her there as well.  She has been out gathering greens for tonight's supper.  Can you see the fiddle heads?  The dandelion leaves?  Anyways she is actually residing above the fireplace in my house but would be happy to move to yours... To bid, click above.  It will take you to my ebay auction and also give you access to my online Ebay Gallery, Store.

Where to find inspiration

I think you find inspiration best when you are not actually looking for it.  It is best found when you keep an open mind and when an idea presents itself, instead of saying, "well that's not really my thing." just stop a minute and ask yourself if you might want to give it a try.  Sometimes, of course the answer is 'No' but every now and then when you say 'yes' powerfully and step into the moment, you find your new joy or new direction.  Here are a few things that presented themselves in that way to me.
1.  Tulsa Artist Coalition had a 5x5 fundraiser.  They supplied the canvas and asked you to paint on it or create something w those dimensions.  I had never painted small, nor did I have any desire to do so.  Here is what happened after accepting that challenge:
   1.  I loved it.  I could paint something that didn't take all day and had a beautiful resulting painting which of course, sold in their sale.
   2.  I joined an online daily painting group which inspired me further as I saw what others were doing.
   3.  I began to fill my kitchen wall w daily paintings which changed often as...
   4.  sales increased in my ebay gallery.
   5.  I found that my little photos of beach figures transferred perfectly to the snapshot size of a 6x6.
   6.  My students loved trying out the same thing.
   7.  I got a commission from an ebay buyer for even smaller paintings and discovered the idea of 'art cards' which were trading card size.
   8.  I got multiple commissions for clients who wished for me to paint from their own beach photos.  Below is one of the finished paintings.

2.  I went to France and stayed in an abby where an old friend is a sister.  I got to paint the beautiful countryside in Provence where the convent was. While there I met a French woman with a hideous painting on the side of her mini van.  With the help of a translator she asked if I could paint something on the side of her van to cover up that painting.  I tried to get out of it every which way and finally agreed to cover the old with a painting of Provence.  I had done several sketches prior to that so had some things to work from as well as looking out over the olive grove where the van was parked.  It had been 30 years since I had worked in acrylics and I gave it the old college try.  It turned out great and she was so pleased.  Now I can say I have a traveling show in France ! ha ha...Actually after that, I got tons of hits on my ebay site and blog from France as I am sure she shared the story of her new painting where ever she went.

3.  One of my students wanted to do a painting of umbrellas in the rain and brought in a file morgue photo to work from.  I didn't much like it and rearranged the figures and decided to try something out of the ordinary with it and try to create a real atmosphere of a rainy day.  It was very impressionistic as there were lots of lost edges as I drug the brush across well painted umbrellas and figures.  ( that is a jump for me as I want to work towards a painterly way of painting but my brain keeps wanting to paint things w perfect edges)  This idea gave me the push I needed to make the jump.  I have since been inspired to paint some cityscapes in the rain from my own town.  Finishing two that have both won entry into recent shows.

4.  Seeing the cityscapes and wanting something in that vein for his drum head, my son asked me to paint on his drum head ( the big one that you use a foot pedal for )  He also liked my big sky paintings.  My other son suggested a tornado. ( we are from Oklahoma, remember?)  Unable to decide, I told him I would surprise him.  I combined a rainy Tulsa with an approaching tornado.  I figured it would be perfect... his city, pitter patter drum/rain beats, and an approaching loud, exciting storm.
If you would like to visit my online gallery and bid on my latest daily painting, Click Here

Blooming Vetch

To bid

I took a walk with my pup way down into a  hollow that spread out into a beautiful field the other day.  The temperature was perfect, there was every kind of wild flower blooming.  I even spotted a deer and watched while she considered if I was a friend or foe.  She decided to lean toward the safe side and got up from her hiding place and made it across the field and into the woods.  I thought it was such a beautiful place and the weather was perfect that I decided to  hike back up the hill and go get my painting supplies and come back  I completed two little sketches that I am very pleased with.  They both feature the 'weed,' vetch which turned the ground to a pretty violet where ever it sprang.

It was too pretty to pass up...

It was too pretty today to pass up an opportunity to paint.  I took my dog for a walk down on the back 40 and then decided that the weather was perfect, the scenery was perfect, the birds were singing and so we hiked back to the car, went home, got painting supplies and hiked back down to paint.  A beautiful day

SOLD

Thoughts on gardening on the wild side

I was out in the garden yesterday and picked lettuce and some spinach.  I noticed purslane growing in with the basil, sorrel and lambsquarters growing in with the lettuce and dandelion and poke scattered around as well.  I wish people would stop seeing this stuff as weeds and realize that they grow without any help from you, provide food during more than one season and plant themselves again for the following year.  Why would I dig or pull these things up?  I no longer do.  I bring the sorrel in to add to my mint tea and pestos, lambsquarters for anthing that uses greens including salads, purslane for fresh salads and poke for cooked greens and to freeze for the winter.  We need to start seeing things differently if we expect these valuable plants to survive corporate farming. My garden probably doesn't look as organized as those with out a weed and everything in its proper rows but I have decided to see it as useful and beautiful as it is. 

Testing the waters

Memories... Everything about the beach makes me feel good.  Some of my favorite years as a child, as a teen, as a mom and now.... still makes me feel young to be there although I no longer catch the eye of the cute lifeguard :-)  This painting came out of some great photos sent to me by a client for a commissioned painting.  I have since used these photos for some lovely little paintings.  This is one of my favorites.


To Bid

Mulberry Tree

One more day in the tops of the trees and I think it is finished. 

I love my job.  Who else gets to hang out in the tops of the trees all day, listening to the birds, watching the squirrels race around and eating fresh berries while doing so.... oh, and did I mention, getting to oil paint too?  What a life.
If you want to bid on this it is on ebay for the next few days on auction.  Bid here

A work of art from the garden

Revisiting a painting from this time last year

I decided not to paint the peonies this year and just pick them and enjoy them.  I do love to paint them but this year put my energies into some other kinds of paintings like my rainy city series and my tree tops.

To Bid

Mulberry Tree

Sometimes the question pops up... " Should I pick it, or should I paint it?"  That was the case the other day as I climbed the steps to our little tree house garage apt. to check out the mulberry tree.  They are nearing ripeness but still white.  In the mean time I had a flash back to when I was a young girl who loved to climb trees and sit in the tallest branches.  Soooo I decided to paint the tree instead.  It is almost finished but not quite.

Canoeing the Boundry Waters

9x11 oil on canvas

Mayfest Invitational

I am excited to be invited again to participate in the Mayfest International Invitational show this year.  It opens Wednesday night ( tickets are around $25 and go to support the Mayfest) After that it is free until it closes on Sunday afternoon.  Always exciting to see what my artist pals pull out for this show. 

This is one and dang it, I can't find the photo of the other one which is a painting of a city street in the rain.

To Garden or to Paint? That is the question.

I love Google.  I googled a recipe for honeysuckle jelly and decided to add a few rose petals for good measure and color.  I thought I had everything covered and went to get the pectin and mine was powdered and the recipe called for liquid so I did some very quick reading and my fingers are crossed that it will jell properly.  If not, I will do the old trick with cream cheese w jelly poured over it, served with crackers and just say, " I meant to do it." :-)

The Journey

A lot of people think that when they see a painting on the wall that the artist had a specific idea of how it should look in the end and that is how it turned out.  For most of us, it is a journey.  We have a very vague idea and we jump in and see where it leads.  I did this painting last year as a class project.  My class wanted to do a landscape and a portrait and so we combined the two.  I really liked the landscape and I liked the pretty face on my portrait but wasn't pleased with the rest of her and didn't like the way the two fit together.  It took me a year to give it a second look and so here is where we are today....

Wanna bid on this on Ebay?  Click here

To Garden.... or To Paint.... or Both!

This week I am doing a lot of both. To start off with the harvest of lots of dandelion and redbud blossoms a few weeks ago is going to pay off in another few weeks ( my fingers are crossed) with some tasty dandelion wine.  I tasted before I bottled it and it was pretty darned good so hopefully nothing goes wrong with the rest of the process.

I am also working on a painting of the lilac bush that was in full bloom last week, a painting from our trip down the Buffalo River last weekend ( a mere pleine aire sketch at this point,) and finishing a painting from my adult class.

a short painting demo

I had forgotten about this until someone commented on it today.  A pretty good little demo if I do say so myself.  It is me painting one little white cup.  It takes about 5-7 minutes or so. 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLy5nQlqmkE&authuser=0

Oklahoma Artists League Show

This Thursday, April 9th at the Circle Cinema in Tulsa, OK opening 5:30-8:00
Those of you in the area, please stop by.
It will be up for 2 months so feel free to stop in later and take in a movie as well :-)

Portraits and Sky Oil Paintings

 I thought I would revisit a few paintings that were used as an excuse to paint both a portrait and a wild and interesting sky.  We have wonderful sunsets, dramatic storms and beautiful clouds out here in the flat lands and I like to include them when ever I can.  The middle painting is open for bidding on Ebay today.  The others have already been sold.
To Bid

Playing in the Creek

This is a painting of my great nieces playing on Summer vacation at one of our favorite haunts.
To Bid

My experiment in automatic watering system

I put a little how to video on you tube about the creation of this system.  It was very easy to do and by trial and error, I finally got it to not be leaky.  The key to that was use a calk that is specifically used to calk guttering and is found on the guttering isle ( not where the other calk is) in my local hardware store.  Basically this is a closed system that allows water to come in via a hose connected to a very large rain barrel.  The key to success is a float that I ordered online that is made for this system.  It was a little tricky to find the right attachments to make this work but a very sweet guy at Home Depot spent around 15 minutes w me looking for just the right attachments and cut some pvc pipe to make it all work out. What you can't see in this picture ( and thanks to my husband, Scott who drilled the big holes in the bottom of each of these) is that there is about a 3" circular hole in the bottom of each of these where we dropped a little basket which dips down into the water in the gutter and is filled with potting soil which wicks up into the rest of the bucket where I have various seeds and plants planted.  Cool, huh?  It works!!

Just an interesting, no flour recipe for great crackers that I made up

Sorry that this is the kind of recipe that calls for a pinch of this and a handful of that but it is the best I can do...

I made something quite delicious the other day and thought I would share w you. took one can of low sodium white beans, put in blender w one egg, a bunch of almonds, a heavy dose of cumin, garlic pwdr , chili pwder, cayenne, blk pepper... I think I added a little water to make it pourable if I remember correctly. Pour on parchment paper on a cookie sheet so that it is as thin as you can get it. Sprinkle w seseme and other seeds that you might have handy. bake at around 350 and check it every 5 minutes or so. fliip it when it looks like it has tosted a little. I left the parhment paper on one of them and stripped it off one w the same results either way and then cook a little longer to toast the other side. They were DELISH! great crackers.... Scott said he hated to put anyting on them because they were so good by themselves. you could use them for pizza like crust as well, i bet.  I would post a picture but darn it.... they are all gone but the crumbs!

Kirsten

To Bid
Always love a chance to work with a live model.

Gathering Spring Greens

I was listing some paintings on Ebay today and ran across one of my favorites.  This painting was inspired by a walk in an ancient forest in Oklahoma and by a Waterhouse painting.  The painting was one done as I lead the class through the process of painting a portrait in my adult oil painting class.  Instead of putting my subject inside a building as Waterhouse did, I moved her outside, into the forest and gave her a job to do.  She has been out gathering spring greens and herbs.  If you want to visit her in my ebay gallery click here.
To visit my foraging blog click here

Cowgirls

I was just revisiting some older pieces and decided to post this one on ebay this week for auction.
To Bid

My son, Dylan got a nice write up in No Depression Magazine

This is great music to listen to while you paint.  It is soothing yet surprising.  Unexpected twists and turns.
http://nodepression.com/album-review/various-artists-imaginational-anthem-volume-7-guitar-soli

Various Artists - Imaginational Anthem Volume 7: Guitar Soli

by Rob Caldwell
February 3, 2015

Tompkins Square’s Imaginational Anthem series has become a standard for presenting solo instrumental acoustic guitar music in the “American Primitive”, or “Guitar Soli” style.  Since the first volume 10 years ago, the series has included new artists as well as bringing back to light influential and important guitarists of yesteryear. Partly as a result, solo acoustic guitar has been enjoying a revival of sorts lately, with artists such as William Tyler, Daniel Bachman, and James Blackshaw attracting fairly widespread attention. Hayden Pedigo (featured last year in Vogue, of all places) is one of this new breed and has been chosen to curate the latest, Volume 7: Guitar Soli. Pedigo is an inspired choice, as his most recent album Five Steps features collaborations with a menagerie of adventuresome guitarists ranging from Fred Frith and Peter Walker to Acid Mothers Temple’s Kawabata Makoto.
Even though the Imaginational Anthem albums showcase just one instrument, a lot of ground is covered.  Beethoven didn’t call the guitar a miniature orchestra for no reason. “Culverts”, by Sean Proper and “Red Bud Valley” by Dylan Golden Acock recall the “Takoma School” of playing (Leo Kottke, John Fahey) with bright, clean lines. Conversely, Chuck Johnson’s “On a Slow Passing Through a Ghost Town” is more contemplative, it’s haunting melody line stark and cinematic.
Things get experimental on “Trees Return to Soil”, by Simon Scott (best known as the drummer for Slowdive) - an atmospheric piece with subtle background noise and the close-miked sound of fingers on strings. Similarly, Jordan Norton’s “Araucaria” delves into ambient territory with an echoing sound landscape evoking empty spaces, with gentle percussive fingerpicking, almost banjo-like.  “0/3”, by M. Mucci features an accompanying tapping on the guitar body creating a duet between strings and wood.
Kyle Fosburgh’s “The Great North American Wilderness” is stately and grand, the deep resonance of the notes conveying a deep reverence for the wilderness of the track’s title. Some of the song names on the collection are more vague, playful (Christoph Bruhn’s “Something, or Oil Paintings”) or seemingly at odds with the music than Fosburgh’s. With a title like “Shadow Study at 6 am”, you might expect Mariano Rodriguez’ piece to be mellow and moody. Yet Rodriguez is wide awake in this greet-the-morning song, his confident playing ringing in the day.

Each of the tracks on Volume 7 tell a story and, though some of the playing is rooted in the sounds and styles of trailblazing guitarists of yore,  there’s always a striving to see what new things can be done with this “miniature orchestra” called the guitar. Based on the evidence here, the future is bright for guitar soli.
(Imaginational Anthem Vol. 7 is out Feb. 17)

Pre Raphaelite Girl with Cat

I was looking through some old painting photos and came across this painting which I did as a demo in my adult painting class.  I really liked how it turned out and apparently someone else did as well as it sold pretty quickly. 

A walk in the woods

To Bid

To Claire Goes Foraging children's book, written and illustrated by Margaret Aycock

If you leave a painting with an artist long enough, invariably it will go through a revision or two.  This one had a dog in it a few weeks ago and the more I looked at it the more I thought... I am not married to the idea of having this dog in the painting.  This week, out she goes.  I like the painting much better now.  It is on auction this week on ebay.  If it doesn't sell this week it is going to a Mardi Gras  fundraiser next week. 

Pink Peonies

To Bid

This is one among many recent paintings that are on auction this week.  Clicking above takes you to this painting where there will be links to the rest of the gallery and auctions.

FREE DOWNLOAD TODAY CLAIRE GOES FORAGING

I just finished publishing a little children's book on foraging.  All throughout the book are original oil paintings.  I borrowed my great niece and a good friend, Charica who modeled for the paintings.  I thought I would let you guys know so that you could read it for free today and tomorrow on Kindle. I had a tough time getting the Kindle version to upload my recipe/scrapbook pages.  This time it includes the missing recipe/scrapbook pages.  My fingers are crossed that it looks ok on your end.  On my end it previews the pages on Kindle which looks small to me.  Hopefully you can pinch it out so photos are bigger and you can read the words.  Let me know if something still needs to be tweaked.  If anyone else wants to add a good review, I would sure appreciate it.... and of course I have physical copies of the book at my house so I know they came out great  ( they pumped up the color a bit more than my original paintings but still looks fine) so feel free to order those with no worries.

http://www.amazon.com/Claire-Goes-Foraging-Margaret-Aycock-ebook/dp/B00RE0OE6U

My Gallery:  http://midwest-fine-art.com

Kindle Sales of Claire Goes Foraging FREE this week beginning 1/7/15

So you have an opportunity to read my book in advance of buying it for your child, I have made it available for free this week for Kindle.  On Amazon this week, Kindle sales are free, any other day Kindle sales are only $3.   I hope you read my little book, enjoy it, buy a copy and leave me a great review on Amazon.  Happy reading.